Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?

[Shawn B.14]

I have the "Dropbox Plus" subscription and I run the client on 4 computers.

Yesterday (Monday, 13-Jan-2020) I signed onto my desktop (which is always on) and has a full local sync of my dropbox that a number of new files added Saturday had big red Xs on them -- JPEGs I had scanned Saturday and which were in sync to my laptop on Sunday morning.

I checked my other workstation (also always on) and Dropbox wasn't even running.  I launched it, and it pretty immediately ran a "one time update".   Once this completed, it appeared to go into a full-on sync mode, indexing thousands of files and downloading thousands more (my total dropbox footprint is ~17k files, 600 GB of data).  This has been running for 24 hours without making any apparent progress, despite the drive being materially in sync with my first workstation (using BeyondCompare to check).  Plus not enough system activity to indicate any actual indexing or download was taking place.

I paused workstation 2, uninstalled dropbox on workstation 1 and reinstalled it.  Just prior to this, workstation 1 was "stuck" uploading 2 files and downloading 7 files, which it had been on since last night.

Workstation 1 now shows "indexing" for around 8k files and "downloading" for 9k files.  Trouble is, Resource Monitor doesn't show disk activity or network activity for that kind of activity.

What's going on?  I was perfectly in sync as of Saturday morning and over the last 24 hours it's gotten bad.

Oddly, my laptop ("laptop 1") is apparently fine, showing more or less normal sync status as far as I can tell (and is on build 88.4.172).

[Fiona]

Hello again everyone.

@PatWard I located your case and it is no longer with @Daphne, this is why you don't have a response. The case is escalated from what I see and I just added a note with feedback and raised the priority. You should have a response soon. Keep me posted. 

@Server_Align Thank you for your participation. 

@AngstromZA I believe this article will help you understand more about this issue you are reporting:  Why is the Dropbox desktop app using so much memory or CPU on my computer?

[tonyskate]

Any progress on endless syncing, high CPU & disc usage? Not even Fix hardlinks is working now. Are you still gonna blame your paying users or finally admit that the latest two versions are buggy? Why there is not option to block auto update so we can install older version and have a working Dropbox?

[AngstromZA]

@Fiona : Thanks for the suggestion.

My point, however, is not why it is using a lot of memory but rather *that* it is using a lot of memory.

On a 32 bit system or with a 32 bit address space you can only allocate or address 2 to the power of 32 bytes, i.e. ‭4 294 967 296‬ bytes.  Divide this by 1024 * 1024 * 1024 to convert to GB and you get a maximum of 4GB if the app is linked with IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE set at compile time. (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/win32/memory/memory-limits-for-windows-releases?redirectedf...)

This is true even if the operating system supports 64 bit addressing.

This is an oversimplification but I think it's worth noting.

Of course, this may be moot since some of the logs generated by the app indicate it was developed using Python which, I believe, should be protected by the garbage collector.

Anyhoo, just thinking out loud! 🙂

[Fiona]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts @AngstromZA. 

[S34W0LF]

It helped me! Woohoo! @Server_Align you are the man! Thank you so much.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Dropbox-is-stuck-syncing-after-an-update-what-can-I-do...

It is syncing now, will need a couple of days it seems, but I am unstuck!

For reference, I was stuck in "Syncing..." status for 13 days. No crashes, No CPU or Memory consumption, it was just sitting there  "Syncing..."

@Server_Align 's trick did the job. I do not see extended double files or anything, new files from the cloud are downloading and my "stuck" files are being uploaded, all seems fine.

Thanks again!

[Shawn599]

Ditto - who is that superhero behind the mask of @Server_Align?  Dropbox seems to be working better after doing the 9 steps exactly.  Instead of 32,000 + files, it got stuck at only 918 files.  I rebooted and we'll see if it finishes.

***  Update ***

Rats.  Dropbox is still stuck syncing 918 files.  These files are older and synced just fine before.

[tonyskate]

That solution works but only until you restart your PC. Well, another proof that the issue is not on our side, but Dropbox **bleep**ed up.

[AlignAdmin]

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@Shawn599 wrote:

Ditto - who is that superhero behind the mask of @Server_Align?  Dropbox seems to be working better after doing the 9 steps exactly.  Instead of 32,000 + files, it got stuck at only 918 files.  I rebooted and we'll see if it finishes.

***  Update ***

Rats.  Dropbox is still stuck syncing 918 files.  These files are older and synced just fine before.

---

FYI : Im a long term comercial user of dropbox, its now a secondry service due to the number of issues we previously have had, its fast syncing but as you see has issues and the helpdesk and forum dropbox users I have found to be usless. To the point I dont even bother with them now, you cant trust a word they say and they don't listen to whats said to them. Beta builds faults are ignored and allowed to move to production. USELESS! 

I found my solution from years of having to tweak DB so you start to get the way the thing works, and what its up to and where it falls down 😞

On your issues of 918 files left, DB syncs smallest files to largest files in that order (unless you have so many the sort routine failed and then its in what ever order it was when it failed, this happens to me with 700k+ files but thats to be expected)

So maybe those files are significantly larger maybe its nothing to do with that hard to tell. I suggest a tool to assist http://www.nirsoft.net/ OpenedFilesView v1.86 (64bit) run this up and filter it to dropbox.exe and see all the files its opening. I have found this can ping a difficult file. I have often simply copied that file out of dropbox, deleted the file in dropbox, then moved the copy back in and that alone was enough, reason unknown.

Hope this might help.

Anyone Rebooting, remember with lots of files it takes some time to spin up (not days tho!)

* OMG and now this forum posted me as a new user?!?!?!?

[Shawn599]

Thanks again, @Server_Align, now apparently renamed @AlignAdmin.  I sure appreciate your help, as well as the efforts of everyone here to make Dropbox work for all of us.

I think I have tried everything applicable in this thread.  However, my computer continues to be stuck syncing. 

Trying to salvage Dropbox has taken too many hours already.  I am beginning the switch to OneDrive.  It looks like the files that may have been giving Dropbox fits are syncing fine with OneDrive.

Now, how do I disable automatic renewals of Dropbox?  I tried removing my credit card information and it would not let me do that.

[Fiona]

Sad to see you go due to syncing issues @Shawn599. 

I am sending you an email to help with cancelling your automatic renewals and anything else you might need. 

I used the email address associated to your Community profile. I hope this is OK. 

Thank you!